Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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From 2018, when the original NPF was published, we saw lower densities being stitched into city and county development plans outside of Dublin than we saw in Dublin. We saw far less ambition for the kind of infrastructure investment that would lead to the right kind of density to support the right kind of sustainable growth. It is a real concern for me that the current draft of the NPF again misses the net. While I acknowledge both the 2018 document and this draft are absolutely a step in the right direction, six years on from the original, we should be taking quite a few more steps in the right direction. I do not see the draft as being this. This is the strategic vision for the development of the country through to 2040 and beyond. It is going to lead to some of the problems Deputies Ó Broin and O'Callaghan outlined, that we are going to get more dispersed, more peripheral and lower density settlement, which is going to drive transport emissions particularly. I hope the CCAC could look at that and offer a view to the Department and to the Minister such that we get the right kind of infrastructural investment in the regional cities.